


in search of answers

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e19 The Dirty Half Dozen, F/M, Fluff, Trip Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 07:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17638127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: While Jemma prepares herself for the arctic mission, Trip comes to her with a rather urgent request.





	in search of answers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "I'm afraid" on tumblr.

“Hey. You busy?”

Despite the nature of her task, Jemma can’t help a smile when she sees Trip in her doorway. “Not at all,” she says—that is a lie; she’s in quite a hurry to finish packing so that she might catch Coulson in time to convince him he ought to bring her along on this mission. And yet the lie slips out all the same. She can’t be too busy for Trip. So she buries the splinter bomb inside a thermal blanket and moves to meet him. “Is it your hand?” she asks.

He lets her take it for a cursory examination, using his uninjured hand to close the door behind him. This is another reason she can’t bear to rush him. Not the injury itself but how he sustained it. He—along with Fitz and Coulson—has been gone for _days_. And that after their base was attacked by an invading force led by their friends and allies. Those same people have been hunting Trip and the others and, while it seems everyone’s making a go at getting along _now_ , that does nothing for the fears and worries Jemma’s spent days storing up for her wayward teammates.

“The hand’s fine,” Trip says. “I had a good doctor.” Though the gifted who treated him on the scene is, in fact, a licensed physician, the warmth in his voice tells her he’s thinking more of his check-up once he returned to base. “I came to talk.”

“All right,” she says. When she loosens her grip on his hand, his fingers curl around hers. It’s not a strong hold, barely a flinch, but it’s enough to tell her he’d rather she keep holding on. So she does. “What’s bothering you?”

His smile widens and he shakes his head ruefully. “Not doing a great job hiding it, am I?”

“You are.” No one could say Trip’s smile has been anything less than warm since his return. And yet… “I know when something’s wrong with you.”

“You do?”

“Well, I _am_ your doctor and you have an annoying habit of getting yourself hurt.” Embarrassed by his smile, she looks down to confess, “So I watch you. So that I can compare-”

His hand is on her face, then in her hair. She has to look at him. His eyes, his lips. He’s so close now. He’s going to kiss her, she’s sure.

“Packing?” he asks. He’s looking over her shoulder at the bag on her bed.

With the moment broken, she’s suddenly desperate for space. She disentangles their hands and moves away to add a medkit to the bag. “Yes,” she says. “I’m going to ask Coulson if I might be included in the mission to rescue Mike. He’ll need a medic.”

“Gonzales has plenty of medics.”

Jemma turns to face him. She’s only heard that tone—bitter, cold—from him once before. The night they sat up late beside a motel pool, nursing the pain of Ward’s betrayal.

“He does,” Jemma agrees. Gonzales seems to have plenty of everything they’ve needed so desperately these past months. “But none of them know the Deathlok implants as well as I do.”

Trip nods, but he doesn’t seem satisfied.

Jemma returns to her packing, hurrying her pace. “That’s why I have to get this done. There isn’t much time before they leave-”

“Come with me.”

She faces him again. He keeps _doing_ that, saying mundane little statements and, in doing so, drawing her full attention. It’s quite inconvenient.

“I told you, I have to hurry. Can’t it be someone else?” Whatever it is he needs her for, surely with all the agents crowding the base these days there will be someone else qualified.

He steps close again, taking her hands from her packing and holding them to his chest. The brace he’s wearing is rough and all tough edges, but his grip is warm and gentle. She has to fight the urge to lean into him. “I mean don’t go on the mission. Come with me.”

She doesn’t see how that changes her suggestion but asks, “Where?”

“Anywhere.” He shrugs. “Paris. Sydney. Hong Kong. Anywhere but here. Everyone’s gonna be focused on Coulson’s mission. It’s the perfect time to get a head start.”

She sways, but not into him. If he weren’t holding her, she’d fall straight back onto the bed. “You mean _leave SHIELD_?” she asks, the final words a whisper like she fears someone might be listening.

And, considering recent events, perhaps she does.

He drops his head. His jovial features twist the same way they did that night last spring when he talked about Garrett. “Bobbi and Mack, they lied to us and used us, same as Hydra did.” 

She knows, without his having said so, that what he really means is they did the same Ward and Garrett did. “But they’re not Hydra,” she says, echoing words May said to her when she admitted to joining their cause, even under duress.

“Maybe not. But I thought what we were building here was supposed to be a better SHIELD, not more of the same.”

She stares, unseeing, at his shirt. She can’t fault him his feelings on the matter. These last few days, pretending to go along with Ann and Bobbi, being so plainly wooed and watched and manipulated … it’s all reminded her far too much of the months she spent undercover.

“Did you know that Calderon guy got hurt because he was trying to kill Skye?”

She did. But hearing it said so baldly for the first time makes her flinch.

“Just because she’s got powers and he’s scared of that. And Lincoln? He saved Hunter’s life and now he’s rotting away in Vault D while Ward’s allowed to go wherever he pleases. Even when we were Hydra, SHIELD still cared about gifteds, treated them like _people_.”

Jemma thinks of how she reacted to Skye’s change, to what she _thought_ was an alien virus that had turned Raina into a monster. It’s not the same, she didn’t _know_ , but she still keeps her eyes averted in shame.

Trip squeezes her hands. If he has any idea what she’s thinking, he clearly doesn’t see her as guilty. “Come with me.”

She pushes aside feelings that have no place in this conversation. He’s asking her- asking her to _run away with him_. They’ve barely begun and even that is a very generous assessment. This—the casual and entirely innocent contact—is still new. They’ve spent months building to it. And now, what he’s asking … it’s too fast.

“Why?” she asks. “Why are you asking me? I could tell someone, ruin your plans.”

“You won’t,” he says, soft and sure.

“Why not just go on your own?”

His hands shift around hers. After a moment’s hesitation, he lifts them, pressing his lips to her fingertips. “Because I’m afraid. I know this is what I’ve gotta do, I can’t be part of whatever Gonzales is building. But I’m afraid if I do, if I leave _you_ , I’ll always wonder what might’ve happened. And I think you will too.”

She will. She knows as soon as he says it that if he had left without a word, this something building between them would always be an unanswered question in her heart. She thinks of the almost kiss when he first entered and the countless nights she’s sat up indulging girlish fantasies about how it might finally happen. Whatever this is, she’s been aching to find out for ages.

“Jemma?” he asks softly, breaking into her thoughts after several moments. “I know this is kind of a big decision, but there’s not a whole lot of time to make it.”

But there’s the team to think of. Her plans to protect them from Ward, once and for all. And, beyond that, how can she just abandon them in the midst of all that’s going on?

Her heart twists, but not in the agony of indecision. Abandonment is a familiar friend. She’s been feeling that way for months. Left out. Ignored. The others have formed new bonds with Mack and Hunter and Bobbi. And Jemma, uncertain with Fitz and out of place on the team after so long an absence, has never been able to fit back in the way she once did. If she stays to see out this reconciliation scheme of Coulson’s, she can see how it will go: those rifts will grow deeper and longer as they all take on new roles in SHIELD’s rebuilding. She’ll lose the team either way.

Does the good she might be able to do— _might_ because, as she said herself, there are plenty of agents who can fill her shoes now and who’s to say Gonzales and his ilk will allow her to do any good at all—outweigh the aggravation of this unanswered question between herself and Trip?

No. It doesn’t even compare.

“All right.” Trip’s hands loosen, allowing Jemma’s hands to drop, limp, to her sides. Too late she realizes she spoke her denial aloud. “That’s fine. I get it, you’ve got a job to do and the others need you. No hard feelings.”

“No!” She lunges to catch him before he can leave. He turns back and just like that they’re close as they were at the door. “I mean, no, there isn’t a lot of time. But I want to go. With you.”

He smiles. Wider and brighter than she’s ever seen, which is saying something with Trip. She blushes in the face of it.

“Seriously?”

She nods once. “Seriously.”

His shoulders loosen, giving her some sign of the tension he’s been carrying while waiting for her answer. That too touches her deeply. But there’s no time to dwell on it—not because of their impending escape from SHIELD, but because Trip wraps his injured arm around her back and crosses that last line between them.

The kiss is far better than she imagined.

 


End file.
